Della+Davis

On May 18, 1925, Della Davis, a 25-year-old Black woman, died in Chicago from an illegal abortion performed that day, leaving behind her husband, Huston.

The person responsible for her death was never caught. However, given the plethora of physicians and midwives running abortion practices in Chicago at the time, there is a strong likelihood that she availed herself of one of them.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more [|here].



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 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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